The Devil's Horn (15 page)

“Whoa. Hey. We’re Americans. It’s alright.”

She stopped backing away.

“It was your missile.”

Wally spoke too fast; he took more strides her way.

“How do you know that? Who are you? Stay right there.”

She said only, “No.”

“We want to ask you some questions.”

LB raised both arms to draw her attention from Wally.

“Look, it’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you. Just . . .”

She took off.

LB lowered his NVGs and lit out after her. Wally followed. The girl’s green image dashed for the hole in the hedge.

Vexed and sprinting, LB shouted over his shoulder, “Where’d you learn to talk to women?”

He outran Wally’s jumbled curse.

LB reached the gap in the scrub and rushed through. Wally followed, gaining, a faster, long-legged runner. Twenty yards ahead, the girl zigzagged through the brush and low-hanging trees. LB worried if they chased her too far into the night, they’d lose their way back to the drone, even with NVGs. The girl slowed to look back at her pursuers. Rather than dodging the next thick hedge in front of her, she dove straight into it. She disappeared among the branches and leaves shivering in her wake.

LB sped up, figuring to catch her now. He lowered his shoulder to thrust through the hedge and gain on her. Wally, running flat out beside him, crossed his arms to ram into the hedge hard and fast, too.

LB curled an elbow around his face to protect himself. He hit the hedge at the same spot the girl did.

He crashed forward just two more strides before he was stopped in his tracks. His uniform and skin were snared on the longest, sharpest thorns LB had ever seen or imagined. Wally hung next to him, dangling in the spines like a marionette.

The girl had vanished.

Chapter 13

Promise crossed both forearms to protect her face, turned sideways, then hit the acacia hedge at full speed.

Driving through the barbs, she swung her shoulders and torso to keep the thorns from gripping her clothes. A hundred sharp points nicked her bare arms and knees, but she pushed deeper through the nipping branches until she broke free.

Without breaking stride, Promise ran ten more meters, then jumped feetfirst into the shoulders-wide mouth of an aardvark hole. She’d found the hiding place after spotting the strangers’ parachutes descending from high in the pink dusk. The anteater that dug the hole wasn’t home, or the tunnel would have been closed behind him. Promise had thrown in pebbles to be sure no leopard or mamba, lion, or python was napping inside. Skidding on her rump, she slid down the tunnel into the larger den. In the cool dirt darkness she held her breath, smarting over her many small stabs and cuts.

Above, the two Americans crashed into the hedge. The barbs held them fast; she knew this by their curses.

Promise listened to them thrash against the branches and thorns, and when she was sure they’d been snagged, she crawled out of the aardvark hole.

She approached the hedge warily. Spreading the branches apart, she poked her head inside. In the dim light, without an early moon and with only the first stars, she made out the two figures snared in the acacia like flies on a web. The Americans’ every move added to the bush’s grasp on them and the volume of their complaints. Promise watched them struggle. One of them, the stouter of the two, took this as a taunt.

“You think this is funny? It fucking hurts.”

The other man, tall and lanky, held a pistol. He made a show of forcing his gun-bearing hand through the prickles to tuck the weapon inside his belt. He showed her, with a grunt from more pierced skin, his empty hands.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry if we scared you.”

“Alright.”

“We need to talk to you.”

“Go ahead.”

The heavyset one ran out of patience and in a temper raged against the thorns. He planted his feet and leaned forward, as if into a gale, trying to bull through. He did nothing but impale himself more.

Promise made shushing sounds, the way she might calm a calf. The soldier stopped fighting.

“It’s a buffalo-hook thorn. The Afrikaaners call it
wag-n-bietjie
. It means
the wait-a-bit
.”

The fighter exhaled and sagged. “No shit.”

The tall one spoke, a less frantic man.

“The way you moved through this stuff. It was amazing. You’re a Kruger ranger.”

“Yes.”

The stout one interrupted. “Can we talk outside the shrubbery?”

“You want to get out?”

“Fucking yes!”

“I have questions.”

The tall soldier told his comrade to be quiet, while still looking at Promise through the thorns and darkness.

“We’ve got questions, too. I swear, we won’t hurt you. I need you to believe me.”

“I can see that.”

“Please, ma’am. How do we get out of this bush?”

“If you chase me, I will run again. You won’t catch me.”

“Not a problem.”

Promise explained how to break the hold of the thorns by twisting away, not barging straight into them. The tall one turned his body as she showed him; he slipped through with better results than the other. That one was too broad shouldered and thick in the legs, impatient and agitated. The tall American emerged first from the acacia; his face bore scratches, but no blood had been drawn. Standing before Promise, he made no move for the gun. The second man fought his way out of the bush, kicking and growling. Promise stole a few backward steps, should the Americans be liars.

Both were big-boned and powerful-looking men. In the night, their uniforms were gray and white camouflage. They wore helmets with goggles attached and vests stuffed with radios. Snapped branches and leaves clung to the shorter one, the thorns had dug deep into his uniform. While the tall soldier spoke to Promise, the short one plucked himself clean.

“I’m Captain Bloom, United States Air Force. This is Master Sergeant DiNardo. You are?”

“Promise.”

DiNardo looked up from shedding the detritus of the bush. The captain smiled, a handsome face.

“That’s a pretty name. Can you tell me what happened? I mean to the other ranger?”

“We need to go back to him. We’ll talk there.”

Promise walked past the Americans, leading them around the hedge to the drone and Wophule and all the questions and answers.

Howls floated over their heads.

“We are not alone in the bush, Captain. Put your hand on your weapon.”

The Americans followed her to the crash site. The captain tried to speak at her back, while the short one muttered he was hungry, but Promise walked on. The bush in darkness was no place to be distracted. She focused on the trail and the night sounds. The two Americans seemed out of place, a little lost and defenseless, an unlikely sense for soldiers. Why would they parachute into such a foreign and severe place, so secret and urgent, with one small weapon, no tools, and no food?

Heading back to the drone and Wophule’s corpse, Promise’s guilt returned and mounted. She’d not realized how good it felt to run away into the bush, even chased by soldiers, until she saw the wreckage again and the boy gray against the earth. She imagined turning away right now, disappearing into another hole; she would live in the veld until she was devoured or forgotten. But she had killed Wophule, and that would run faster than Promise.

Wordless, she walked through the broken hedge, following along the trough dug in the ground by the downed drone. She did this with familiarity, as if it all belonged to her; she had seen it first, had made this crash the worst thing in her life. It was hers more than anyone’s.

Promise walked past the drone to squat beside Wophule. This might have been gruesome for the Americans, but she did not concern herself with that. Wophule was hers, too, and though Promise would not admit to the soldiers what she had done, she sat beside the boy to claim his death.

“I speak first.” Promise could tell her lies best if she started.

The captain mirrored her posture, folding his long legs under him in the dirt. He took off his helmet to rub a hand over his crew cut. He looked at Wophule with noticeable sadness; this man seemed more than a soldier and a killer. The other one she could not guess at. He set himself to gathering in the ghostly parachutes they’d left on the ground.

“Go ahead, ma’am,” the captain prompted.

“Wophule and I found the drone. While we were looking it over, poachers came. They shot Wophule before we knew they were there. I fired back, but they surrounded me. I surrendered. They took our rifles.”

“How many were there?”

“Two.”

“How long ago?”

“Two hours.”

“Alright.”

“The drone had a missile under one wing. It was inside a box, a launcher, I think. The poachers pulled it off and took it with them. They said it was an American missile.”

She held out a hand to the captain as proof that this was right.

“Why was your missile on this drone?”

“I can’t answer that.”

His evasion made Promise feel better as a liar. She and the Americans were going to be equals, they would tell each other less than the truth.

Promise moved her hand to her pocket. “I have to phone it in now.”

“You haven’t done that yet?”

“No.”

The captain held up a pale palm in the dark veld.

“I have to ask you not to call anything in just yet.”

“Why?”

The captain considered what denial or half-truth to say next.

“My country doesn’t just leave things like this lying around. The two of us jumped in to get a handle on the situation. I’ve got to ask you to let us deal with it.”

“Why should I do that? You have your job. I have mine.”

The American rubbed a hand across his mouth. He seemed reluctant to say what he had in mind. Promise supposed this would be the first full truth between them, and it would be painful.

“You don’t need me to tell you that you and your partner stumbled onto some of my country’s secrets. I’m not going to apologize for them, not my place to do that. But the sergeant and me, we’ve been sent in to clean them up. That’s all. If you call this drone in, it’ll get out of our hands. The damage that’ll do is more than I can describe to you, but believe me, this needs to stay secret.”

The captain’s hand drifted to the grip of the pistol jammed in his belt.

“If you run, I know we can’t catch you. So I will shoot you. I’ll do everything I can to shoot you in the leg. But I will fire. Now I’ll have your phone, please.”

Nothing about the captain said this was a bluff. Promise handed over the phone. The captain left the gun in his belt to accept. She’d called Juma with that phone. This was the first bit of her to fall away, like a comet over the bush. More pieces would tear off before long, lies and murder, and Promise wondered what would be left.

The stout sergeant finished stowing the parachutes and came to stand over her, hands on hips. These men had come to clean up America’s secrets; that’s what the captain had said. Promise felt an urge, fleeting but powerful, to tell them all of hers: Juma and toothless Good Luck, the rhino she’d cut down, Bongani and the aardvark, Wophule. She might ask the Americans if they could clean away her secrets, too. Promise said nothing. She and the captain exchanged lonesome looks in the starlight, as if he knew and could do nothing for her.

The captain said, “I’m sorry.”

No, he’d not protect her.

The sergeant took a knee close to Promise, as if inspecting her. The nearness of Wophule’s body did not appear to bother this one.

“What are we going to do with you?”

The captain touched Promise’s wrist, sincere.

“Are you going to run? I don’t want to tie you up.”

“I won’t run, Captain. I’ll stay with Wophule.”

“Can we trust you?”

Promise almost wept at the question; for so much of her life the answer to that question was always yes. She wanted to say it again, to mean it, cherish it.

“Yes.” This felt like another secret.

Both Americans got to their feet. Promise stayed seated because she did not know what to do next. Neither did the standing soldiers; they glanced into the dark, and once more the bush reminded them with screeches and roars that their presence was known.

The captain seemed to percolate, rubbing his chin and the top of his head for a plan. The sergeant rubbed only his belly.

“Where’s Smokey?”

Promise asked, “Who is that?”

The sergeant scowled. “Never you mind.” He seemed to be nursing hurt feelings from being hung up in the thorns.

A dome of pearly light rose in the east over Mozambique, the half-moon would be up soon. The drone, broken and skewed, finally appeared at peace in the milky light, no more tangled than anything else in the dark Kruger. Wophule had been right, they should have left the thing alone. The bush would take it to itself, wind and sun, rain and claws, grinding it down to bits and rust. But the drone had fallen from the hands of man, and man did not let go so easily.

Just so. She could not let go of Wophule. Guilt was another thing only man brought into the Kruger.

“LB, I’m going to call Torres on the sat phone. You get started covering the boy.”

Promise would not let him be called “the boy.”

“Wophule.”

“I apologize. Wophule.”

The sergeant turned to his chore. With an easy strength, he lifted the big rock he’d dropped on first sight of Promise and set it beside Wophule’s boot.

The captain laid a gentle touch on her again.

“Go help him.”

First, they laid an outline of stones around Wophule. Once he was encircled, Promise and the sergeant paused to rest. Wophule looked peaceful, even handsome inside his palisade. Promise looked on him with a taint of envy that he’d died unmarred by her sins and had died thinking of love.

The sergeant blew out his cheeks. He was less winded than Promise would have guessed a man who looked like him would be. His body was a teakettle, neck as wide as his head. He shook his head, not at the work but at the killing of Wophule.

“Why did the captain call you LB?”

“Why do you call yourself Promise?”

“For Zulu, it is rude to call a person you do not know well by his proper name. So we are given other names, and our real names are kept for family.”

“That’s actually a good answer.”

“Now you.”

“You won’t like it.”

“I already do not like you.”

The sergeant laughed at this. He nodded, accepting a sort of fairness in what she’d said.

“It means ‘Little Bastard.’ ”

“It suits.”

The sergeant, LB, shrugged.

“Your partner?” he asked.

“Yes. For two years. This is Shingwedzi. Our sector.”

LB took off his helmet, an automatic and respectful act.

“That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

LB had donned a new tone and a new light under the stars. For long moments he did not lift his eyes from the stones and cool body. He seemed to be seeing many more dead on the ground than Wophule.